DisneyDreamer2
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2002
- Messages
- 627
Last Sunday, my friend and I, both took the Around the World on a Segway Tour at Epcot (and I still have a huge bruise on my leg to prove it 
).
We met our guide, Letithia (from France) at the Guest Relations inside the park. She walked us over to segway central in the Innoventions building and we each picked out a helmet and were shown a short movie.
We spent the next hour learning to mount and dismount the Segway, riding towards the wall and hopefully stopping before we hit it, navigating orange cones, and learning to go up and down inclines.
It is important to note that if you lean forward, the segway acclerates and goes forward. if you lean or pull back it slows down and goes backward until you stand up straight. To turn, there is a control on the left handle that turned up, turns right, or if turned left, you guessed it turns left.
Why is this important? I will tell you. You see, we only had one small accident in our training classroom so far, and that was my friend who unfortunately was not able to come to a complete stop before meeting the wall. It made her much more cautious and she slowed down considerably. I, however, was very excited that I had taken to it so quickly as i really don't have a lot of coordination (I am 30 and still can't drive a manual transmission).
As we exited the classroom for our World Showcase tour, we were the last two to leave followed by the second CM, Peg (who would later save me from myself in China). I was commenting to my friend that no one saw her crash and she would be fine, especially if i could do this. Just then, as i was going up the ramp to the door, I felt myself getting too close to the wall, panicked, leaned forward to jump off the back. Then of course, THE SEGWAY ATTACKED ME!
And trust me, you do not want to be attacked by a segway.
It was slightly painful but i was ok. Peg rushed to my side and asked calmly "Now what happened?" Did she not see it? IT ATTACKED Me. I anwsered in my victim tone "I don't know. I turned into the wall and accelerated?" She told me not to accelerate into walls and we were off.
If was fun to ride through each of the countries. we rode through stores and restaurants, around the pillars in Italy, through the gardens and over their bridges in China and Japan, through the streets and shops of morrocco, over the uneven paver stones in the train garden in germany,and through the small hedge maze in the garden behind America. (I now know why this tour is so expensive. it is to pay to replace the bushes some of took out with our Segways.
Shhhhh. )
In different countries, our CM guide gave us little known info about the different pavillions. We had to stay single file going in and out of the world Showcase where there were park guests, but between Mexico and Canada we played follow the leader in a free form. we were also allowed free time back in Italy and the Cm's were happy to take pics and video of us.
Back at Segway central, we parked our segways and I recieved a nice pin to go with my nice new bruise as proof of my tour. They really were not hard to learn, but they aren't as easy as riding an escalator either.
I do have a new profound respect when i see the CM speeding on those things on uneven pavement or up or down inclines. It was a lot of fun to do, well except for turning into a wall and acclerating. Maybe I will just stick to escalators from now on. Here I am!
I also did the Epcot Seas Aqua tour which I REALLY loved. I posted a separate report for that, that you can find on the board. Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them.
). We met our guide, Letithia (from France) at the Guest Relations inside the park. She walked us over to segway central in the Innoventions building and we each picked out a helmet and were shown a short movie.
We spent the next hour learning to mount and dismount the Segway, riding towards the wall and hopefully stopping before we hit it, navigating orange cones, and learning to go up and down inclines.
It is important to note that if you lean forward, the segway acclerates and goes forward. if you lean or pull back it slows down and goes backward until you stand up straight. To turn, there is a control on the left handle that turned up, turns right, or if turned left, you guessed it turns left.
Why is this important? I will tell you. You see, we only had one small accident in our training classroom so far, and that was my friend who unfortunately was not able to come to a complete stop before meeting the wall. It made her much more cautious and she slowed down considerably. I, however, was very excited that I had taken to it so quickly as i really don't have a lot of coordination (I am 30 and still can't drive a manual transmission).
As we exited the classroom for our World Showcase tour, we were the last two to leave followed by the second CM, Peg (who would later save me from myself in China). I was commenting to my friend that no one saw her crash and she would be fine, especially if i could do this. Just then, as i was going up the ramp to the door, I felt myself getting too close to the wall, panicked, leaned forward to jump off the back. Then of course, THE SEGWAY ATTACKED ME!
And trust me, you do not want to be attacked by a segway.It was slightly painful but i was ok. Peg rushed to my side and asked calmly "Now what happened?" Did she not see it? IT ATTACKED Me. I anwsered in my victim tone "I don't know. I turned into the wall and accelerated?" She told me not to accelerate into walls and we were off.
If was fun to ride through each of the countries. we rode through stores and restaurants, around the pillars in Italy, through the gardens and over their bridges in China and Japan, through the streets and shops of morrocco, over the uneven paver stones in the train garden in germany,and through the small hedge maze in the garden behind America. (I now know why this tour is so expensive. it is to pay to replace the bushes some of took out with our Segways.
Shhhhh. )In different countries, our CM guide gave us little known info about the different pavillions. We had to stay single file going in and out of the world Showcase where there were park guests, but between Mexico and Canada we played follow the leader in a free form. we were also allowed free time back in Italy and the Cm's were happy to take pics and video of us.
Back at Segway central, we parked our segways and I recieved a nice pin to go with my nice new bruise as proof of my tour. They really were not hard to learn, but they aren't as easy as riding an escalator either.
I do have a new profound respect when i see the CM speeding on those things on uneven pavement or up or down inclines. It was a lot of fun to do, well except for turning into a wall and acclerating. Maybe I will just stick to escalators from now on. Here I am!
I also did the Epcot Seas Aqua tour which I REALLY loved. I posted a separate report for that, that you can find on the board. Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them.
Thanks for the story...
! DS is a pretty good driver, so I hope that we won't have any "incidents" 
